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Berliner Stadtreinigungsbetriebe (BSR)

Berliner Stadtreinigung (BSR) has been deeply rooted in the capital for over 130 years now. We are one hundred percent owned by the Region of Berlin and have been operating as a public corporation since 1994. The Region has entrusted us with sole responsibility for the collection, utilisation, and disposal of waste as well as street cleaning and winter road maintenance. We therefore contribute significantly to the quality of life in the city.

Economic efficiency, price stability, high quality, and the continuous advancement of the company as a service provider beyond our municipal responsibilities are, alongside our sense of social responsibility, the driving forces behind our corporate vision and business goals. Sustainable environmental protection is naturally a matter of concern for us. We attach great importance to the use of innovative technologies and to the environmentally-aware behaviour of our staff. At the focus of our activities are programmes for the protection of the global climate. We are therefore, for instance, also a partner of the Berlin Landesenergieprogramm (Regional Energy Programme).

We do our utmost to assist and encourage young people, for instance, by offering traineeships that exceed our actual requirement for new junior employees. In addition to this, BSR supports the integration of people with disabilities and has already been awarded several integration prizes for this.

To dispose of a wide variety of waste, Berliner Stadtreinigung has developed a clever plant strategy. Thus in future, biogas will be obtained from organic waste by fermentation. The refuse collection vehicles will then be refuelled with this gas – real closed-loop recycling, and real climate protection. We are pioneers when it comes to reducing greenhouse gases in other areas too. The substitute fuels that we produce every year in our bulky waste processing plant prevent the release of approximately 75,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalents per annum that would arise from the use of fossil energy sources. When disposing of the residual domestic waste, BSR cooperates with three partners. 289,000 tonnes of refuse are processed into substitute fuel in two mechanical-physical stabilisation plants, and incombustible material, such as metal, is returned to the production cycle.

We generate power from more than half of Berlin’s domestic waste in our wastefed heating and power plant in Ruhleben: 722,000 megawatt hours per annum. That is enough to supply 63,000 households with electricity and 31,000 households with heat. To achieve this, we pipe the high-pressure steam resulting from incineration to the neighbouring Reuter power station. Since the calorific value of the refuse is roughly equal to that of lignite, we are able to prevent through its use emissions of 207,000 tonnes of CO2 per annum.